A form in which a web application provided by a web application server is used via a web browser of a client apparatus without installing an application on the client apparatus is becoming prevalent. Such a web application includes a document management web application which systematically manages documents created by the client apparatus.
A form in which a server group managed in a centralized manner by others is used without directly managing a web application server by a web application provider is also becoming prevalent. Such a form is called cloud computing. In cloud computing, the web application provider is charged in proportion to the amount of HDD usage and CPU usage of the web application server. In this form, the web application provider is charged a large sum of money for usage charges when he or she stores and manages all documents on the client apparatus in the above-mentioned document management web application. These usage charges are indirectly collected from the users, so their financial burden becomes relatively heavy. Also, when documents sent from a large number of client apparatus are stored in the document management web application, the network load becomes considerably heavy. Hence, only the bibliographic information of the documents is stored in the document management web application instead of storing the actual data of the documents in it in that case. On the other hand, a prior art in which an apparatus such as a portable terminal instructs a printing apparatus to print a document stored in the document management web application by designating its URL has been proposed (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-169671).